Introduction

Is there something unusual about Armenians as a people, or about their histarical experience, that has made them prone to violence? How deeply rooted is Armenian-Turkish enmity? Does devotian to Monophysite Christianity predispose Armenians to hostility toward Islam? What caused Armenian nationalism to intensify in the 19th century and Armenian nationalists to resort to increasingly provocative forms of activity? Did they represent a majority of the Armenian peeple? Is Iate 20th century Armenian terrorism, among the most persistent and irrational on the international scene, the natural and unavoidable outcome of difficulties in the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?

This essay will address each of these questions in turn. In doing so, it will alsa raise additional questions. It cannot answer them all. Its purpose is to encourage reflection and discussion. It is alsa to shift all of these controversial issues to a broader histarical plane and dampen some of the extreme emotionalism that has obstructed rational discourse about Armenian-Turkish relations during the post decade.

The Distant Past

Armenian history is not easy to study. It is long, complex, sometimes obscure and often controversial. There are rich records to draw upon, but texts and traditions have not been as meticulously and critically examined by independent scholars as those of many other old nations. The history of Egypt, or of Greece and Rome, for example, has been written primarily by people who are not directly descended from the ancient civilizations. Texts and inscriptions bearing on the history of these societies have been studied from all possible directions by scholars who have no emotional interest in using them as abasis for glorifying the distant post of the peoples involved - though some, of course, have done so. Armenian history has been studied and written almost entirely by Armenians. The same could be said, though perhaps not to the same degree, of many other peeplesý such as the Georgians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians, who have tenaciously survived the vicissitudes of history. But Armenians seem to represent an extreme case, much more so than Jews, e.g. People who write their own history tend to glorify their post and avoid objective examination of controversial features of it. Armenians have been more prone to do this than most peoples and the trend has become accentuated during the latter half of the 20th century.

It has resulted in emotional dramatization of Armenians as a martyr natian unique in their virtues from time immemorial and unique in their sufferings in both ancient and modem times. This kind of process becomes self-reinforcing, especially so among peoples whose culturallife operates in the diaspora. Poles are prone to it, but Armenians are much more so. They have projected much of their modern history into their post-and have thus transformed it into mythology 1.There are other problems with Armenian histarical writing. Most of it tends to ignore the distinction between natian and state 2.

The origin of the Armenians as anation remains obscure. There is a cultural and territorial relationship to ancient Urartu, but there are important differencesý especially of language. The Empire of Tigranes the Great (1st century BC), which is glorified as Greater Armenia at its maximum extent, was a short-lived and loosely organized state which almasý certainly contained a minority of Armenians. It was overwhelmed by Rome in 66 BC and no single unified Armenian state ever came info being again. Division info kingdoms and principalities which were sometimes independent but more etten owed allegiance to surrounding states and emrires did not prevent Armenians from develoring a sense of national consciousness. Acceptance of Christianity contributed to this process. It alsa helred Armenians maintain their distinctiveness and an orientation toward the West during a period of intense involvement with Persians and then Arabs. Like the Jews, Armenians very early in their history develered habits of living in diaspora-not only as the result of political misfortune at home but at least as much out of a sense of enterprise as traders, erottsmen and servants of foreign rulers. Armenian communities in Persian and Arab lands and in many parts of the Byzantine Empire predate the conversion to Christianity.

The Armenians' first experience of Islam was Arab conquest of their core territories, which occurred in the mid-7th century AD and less than a century later led to the Nakhichevan Massacre of much of the Armenian nobility in 750. But Armenians as a whole accommodated successfully to Arab rule. Dvin, the capital of Arab Armenia, continued to be an important center of religious life and trade. Lands inhabited by Armenians (which seem never to have included large territories of exclusively Armenian population-they were always mixed with Georgians, Kurds, Persians, Greeks and other Caucasian pearlesI were continually caught up in the great imperial rivalries and movements of peoples that dominafe the history of the entire region where the Caucasus, Anatolia and Persia meet: Byzantine vs. Arab, Persian vs. Byzantine, Arab vs. Persian. From the 11th century onward Mongols and Turks enter the seene. By this time the patterns of Armenian interaction with surrounding peoples were firmly set and did not change decisively with the appearance of these more Central Asian newcomers. There are fascinating parallels between the Armenian relationship to the Byzantine Empire and later Armenian involvement with the Ottoman Empire. Some Armenian princes sought allies among Persians, Arabs and other Muslims against the Byzantines. Others sided with the Greeks against their Eastern rivals. Many Armenians emigrated to Byzantine territory and some rose to high positions including the imperial throne. When the Turks appeared on the scene the Byzantine and Armenian Christians did not icin to resisý them. Monophysite Christianity reinforced a profound sense of competitiveness between Armenians and Greeks. The Armenian princes judged their situations in terms of traditional patterns of competition for power- habits of intense internecine political and religious strife had already become deep-seated. When Ani, capital of an important Armenian kingdamý fell to the Seljuks in 1064, its population remained and the city continued to enjoy prosperity under Muslim rule 3. As the Seljuks advanced info Anatolia following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, they found diverse Armenian communities in many cities, where they had settled under the Byzantines. These Armenians continued to practice their professions and their religion.

My purpose is not to reteli, even in summary form, this history, entertaining as it is, but to underscore the fact that there is nothing in it that helps us understand Armenian terrorism in the 20th century. Armenians did not differ from other peoples living in this part of the world in their essential characteristics. They were recognized as a lively and energetic pearle, which explains in part their religious and political fractiousness. They were already widely dispersed. A combination of circumstances- not simply flight from the advancing Turks in Eastern Anatolia- resulted in the migratian of significant numbers of Armenians to the Taurus mountains and the Mediterranean coast. Here the arrival of the Crusaders created conditions favorable to consolidation of an unusual Armenian state, the Kingdom of Cilicia, which became deeply entangled in the complex warfare and political maneuvering between Muslims and Christians that dominated this part of the Near East for two centuries. Though initially identifying with the Crusaders and intermarrying with them, the Armenians of Cilicia were motivated as much by anti-Bvzantine as anti-Islamic sentiment. Eventually both the Armenian kingdam and the Crusaders were defeated by the Mamelukes 4.

Armenians and Ottomans

Consolidation of Attornan power over Anatolia was advantageous to the Armenians who had been settled in smail numbers in almost every part of the country, since Byzantine times, for the Ottomans established peace for the first time in centuries over large areas and encouraged trade and industry. As the Attornan Empire expanded , the area open to enterprising Armenians broadened. Thus Armenian craftsmen, merchants and money-changers prospered. Mehmet the Conqueror recognized the Armenian millet in 1461 with the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul as its head. When the Ottomans conquered southeastern Anatolia and Syria from the Mameluke, the Armenians who had remained in the region after the demise of the Cilician kingdem welcomed them.

The principal problem Armenians had to contend within the Attornan Empire from the 16th century to the 19th was of their own making-sectarian and personel religious contentiousness. A history of the Armenian church describes a situation that arose in the 17th century:

The patriafchal dignity of Constantinople and Jerusalem, however, af ter the departure of the Pontiff from the former city, became an ohied of ambition to severol restless individuals, who aiming continual/y at supplanting each other in that dignity" by bribing the Turkish officefs, again filled the Armenian community with confusion 5.

Developments during the Greek struggle for independence are recounted in the same history, written by a pro-Roman Catholic Mekhitarist:

About this period the Turkish govemment was involved in a war against the Greeks. When at Navarino, the Turkish fIeet being destroyed by the Christians, the Sultan's rage was at the highest pitch. He wished for some occasion to avenge himself against the Christians. This being observed by the Armenian Patriarch, he taek advantage of the circumstance to proceed against the Romanizing Armenians 6.

Though causing the Turkish authorities headaches with their quarrelsomeness,the Armenians well into the 19th century continued to be regarded as the most faithful of the Sultan's non-Muslim subjects. After Greece became independent, more Armenians moved into posts in the Attornan civil service. An Armenian study of this subject, based on Attornan sources, comments:

There are hundreds of books on the Armenian Question and massacres but they emphasize one side of the story to the obscuring of the other side and, accordingly, one can hardly imagine after reading this type of literature that Ottoman-Armenian co-opera tion ever existed or that the Armenians had rendered a considerable service to Attornan public life. My work has been, therefore, to demonstrete the great part which the Armenians took in the public administration of Eastem Anatolia and Syria in the period of the 'Tanzimat'. It should be understood how much the three mil/ion Armenians of Anatolia contributed to the economic and general development of the country, apart from officici service, through trade, agriculture, handicrafts and the professions 7.

Outside Influences

Two very different sources of outside influence combined to cause great changes in the situation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the course of the 19th century. Like most such developments, these seemed at first of no great significance and were perceived as peripheral by the great majority of the Armenians themselves:

1)The Russian imperial adyance into the Caucasus and consequent acquisition of a substantial Armenian population,
2)Foreign missionary activity, primarily American, in Anatolia, of which the Armenians became the principal beneficiaries.

From the dawn of their history, the territory of the Armenians had been seen as divided into two parts: (1) Persian Armenia and (2) Roman/Byzantine/Turkish Armenia. From the beginning of the 19th century, Russian Armerýia becomes an important co nce pt. By the end of the century, the two contrasting sections of what Armenians increasingly came to regard as their "homeland" (though they formed a majority of the population only in smail districts of it) were Turkish and Russian Armenia. Persian Armenia-there were stili sizable Armenian minorities in northwest Iran-was of little political consequence.

It is in these developments during the first half of the 19th century that we find the germs- if not the roots - of the political ferment that would propel smail groups of Armenians into political violence. It would be absurd to argue, of course, that Iate 19th century violence and the extreme terrorism of the Iate 20th centuryare the inevitable result of the incorporation of Armenians into the Russian Empire or the activities of missionaries among them. Least of all did the missionaries, whose initial preoccupation was saving souls but who quickly turned to education and medicine as their major endeavors, have violent intentions. They were largely unaware of the political consequences of their activity. The Russians were less so, but their approach was not different from that of any other power of the time. All powers exploited the ambitions and disaffections of subject peoples to weaken their rivals. Some, more than others, continue to do so today.

Armenians and Russians

Sentimentality about "Iiberating" the Christians of the Caucasus played only an incidentel role in the imperial Russian adyance toward the south. Larger strategic goals, induding a desire for trade, were primary and the Persian Empire, like the Ottoman in a condition of dedine, was a major target. As early as the time of Peter the Great, Georgians and Armenians were seen by the Russians as potential militery and political allies. Given the well-known trading talents of the Armenians, they were additionally attractive for the part they could play in expanding Russian commercial activity. Neither Christian nation was able to organize significant military forces to help the Russians, however, for the Georgian kingdom was rent by political strain and the Armenians were widely scattered, both among the Georgians (where they formed the largest element in the population of Tbilisi) and in the various Muslim khanates which recognized Persian overlordship. The ancient religious center of Echmiadzin remained the seat of the supreme Armenian patriarch (who was often at odds with the patriarch in Istanbul) but the population of surrounding Khanate of Erivan was probably no more than 20% Armenian at the end of the 18th century.

Peter the Great's Coucasian campaigns resulted in no permanent gains. During the ere of Catherine the Great (1762-1796) Russian southword expansion accelerated. The Erirneo was conquered from the Ottoman Empire (1783) and Georgia accepted Russian protection the same year. The stage was set for a determined Russian adyance into the eastem Caucasus and southword into Iran. Armenians long resident in these regions welcomed the Russian adyance and were exploited by the Russians to undermine local Muslim rulers. Russia made major territorjel gains as a result of the first Persian war (1804-1813) and consolidated them in the second Persian war (1826-28) just before going to war with Turkey again 8.Erivan was ceded to Russia by Iran in the Treaty of Turkmanchai in 1828. Not only did Russia acquire sizable numbers of new Armenian citizens in such territories; there had alsa been a steady flow of Armenians into Russian held territory during the previous 50 years, often from locations deep in Iran. Settlement with Iran in 1828 gaye this process further impetus and it was paralleled in part by outflow of Muslims from Russia's new Transcaucasian possessions 9.

From the 1830s onward, Armenians became an important component of the Russian imperial population. As often occurs with refugees, they exerted themselves to make a new life, and profited from the wellestablished Russian imperial principle of co-optation of non-Russian elites. During the 19th century Armenians became militery officers, officials, professional people and entrepreneurs not only in the Caucasus but in other parts of the Russian Empire as well. Their numbers were steadily augmented not only by natural increase, but by immigration from Persian and Attornan Iands. Each Russo -Turkish war resulted in a new stream of Armenian immigrants into Russian territory 10. Armenians taek advantage of expanding opportunities for education in 19th century Russia and developed their own cultural and educational institutions. These complemented the much older institutions Armenians had long maintained in the Attornan Empire and in Venice. While Constantinople remained the foremost center of Armenian culturallife during the 19th century, both religious and secular activity increased rapidly in Tbilisi and Baku and in major cities in the Ukraine and European Russia. Russian Armenians were not always comfortable with Czarist policies and some aspired to greater autonomy. On the whole, however, at least until the dawn of the 20th century evclutian was primarily in the direction of close identification of Russian and Armenian interests. Each of the three great Russo-T urkish wars of the 19th century brought an intensification of these trends and resulted in a more sophisticated effort on the part of the Russians to exploit Armenians in the Attornan Empire, especially those in Eastern Anatolia, for their political and military advantage 11.

Armenians and Missionaries

It has become dogma among some liberal intellectuals and politicians in America to maintain that their government is by nature imperialist and interventionist, while the American people are not. Quite the opposite conclusian would have to be drawn from the early history of the republic. The fledgling U.S. Government shunned foreign entanglements but American traders, missionaries and adventurers went off to all corners of the world and involved themselves in other peoples' affairs with zest. None were more bold than the missionaries who founded the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810 and the American Bible Society in 1816.

The American Board was chartered to propagate the gospel in "heathen lands" and taek within its purview not only the Indian tribes of North America but alsa Muslims, "the more benighted parts of the Roman Catholic world" and the "nominal Christians of Western Asia" 12. Its first missionaries to the Attornan Empire sailed from Boston to ýzmir in November 1819. A decade later, when the American Board was already operating out of a headquarters in Istanbul, it sent its first representatives to explore "Armenia". Eli Smith, a 29 year old Yale graduate, and Harrison Gray Otis Dwight, 27, a product of Andover and Hamilton in upstate New York, made their way across Anatolia, visiting Tokat, Erzurum and Kars in the wake of the recent war. Russian troops were withdrawing and many Armenians were preparing to move to Russian territory. The young missionaries were shocked at the behavior of the Russian army, "a false and scandalous specimen of Christianity", but equally appalled at the condition of the faith among the Armenians:

... an illiterate population lived in underground houses and worshiped in underground churches presided over by ignorant priests 13.

When Smith and Dwight finallt erossed the frontier and arrived in Tbilisi, they found conditions among Georgian Christians no better and compounded by the Georgians' love of alcahal. Visiting a caravanserai, they found a hogshead of New England rum:

Whot o horbingerý thought we, have dur countrymen sent before their missionaries! What a reproof to the Christions of America, that, in finding Helds of lober for their missionaries, they should a/low themselves to be onticipated by her merchants, in finding a market for their poisons 14.

They went on to visit Nakhichevan and Echmiadzin, where they were first received cooly but eventually participated in a religious ceremony and engaged in theological discussion with the secretart of the Patriarch before departing after a five-day stay.

These initial contacts set the tane for the missionary relationship to the Armenian church hierarchy during the remainder of the 19th century. Their reception by the Attornan authorities was less equivocal - they were welcomed by Turkish officials eager to capitalize on their desire to set up schools and spread modern education. Military setbacks both in Greece and on the Caucasian front during the 1820s convinced the Ottoman militart leadership of the necessity of modernization. They welcomed heir both from the missionaries and from American naval officers who established a relationship with the Attornan Empire during this same period. These early beginnings in Turkish-American relations are worth recounting separately, but here we will consider only the Armenian asped. The chief effort of the missionaries was directed toward organizing a high school for the Armenians which opened in Pera (Beyoglu) in October 1834.

Stili a novel institution in the United States", the high school's curriculum placed heavy emphasis on languages (teaching English, French, Italian, ancient Greek, Armenian and Turkish) and offered instruction in compasition, arithmetiçý geometry and geography, bookkeeping and the natural sciences 15. Demand for places for students was so great that the Istanbul Armenian community decided in 1836 to organize anather school, in HaskAy, with places for 500 students. The Armenian church hierarchy objected to the eyangelical tane of the HaskAy school and forced its clasing in 1838. But the missionaries were not to be frustrated for jang by conservative "nominal Christiansýl. They had meanwhile set up mission stations with elementartý schools at severol locations in the Anatolian interior: Trabzon, Kavseri, Tarsus and at Urmia beyand the Persian frontier. The pattern was set. Missionary education among Armenians expanded steadily during the 19th century. And when new higher educational institutions were established, they were kept firmly under missionary control.

The Armenians, more than ant other minority in the Attornan Empire, were what the missionaries were seeking. Exemplifying the New England concert of seeking salvation through an energetic commitment to life and self-improvement, the missionaries offered exactly what an intelligent minority in the Armenian community was most eager to receive: modern education, a formula for self-development and community improvement through rational effort consistently applied. Missionary activity attracted increasingly highquality pearle, both men and women, from the best of the colleges that were expanding all over America. They demanded little of life excert the opportunity to be effective. They were ready to settle in bleak and isolated places with their families and devete their entire lives to their calling. Armenians did not have to uproot themselves to benefit from missionary services.

The missionaries were ready to accert converts from natiye Christians because they knew their status with the Ottoman authorities depended on strict avaidance of proselytizing among Muslims. The appeal of American Protestant Christianity to Armenians eager to modernize lay in its dynamism and openness in contrast to the conservative traditionalism of the Armenian national church. The traditional hierarchy became increasingly hostile to the missionaries after a group of Protestant converts formed a society in 1839. When these people were excommunicated by the Patriarch in 1846, the Armenian Evangelical Church with mara than 1000 members was officially established. Thus a third distinct faction was added to the Armenian religious seene, for an Armenian Catholic mavement had become well established in the 18th century 16. Neither the Catholic nar Protestant Armenian churches attracted large numbers of converts but their influence on the intellectual and political life of the Armenian community was out of all proportion to their size. There was a darkar side to these developments as well:

Far from acknowledging the divisive effect of there activities, the American missionaries regarded themselves as champions of religious liberty in Turkey 17.

The ability of the national church to lead and discipline the Armenian community was impaired. Other factors contributed to this process but the effect of the missionaries was catalytic. While the Attornan authorities becama increasingly concerned about factionalism in the Armenian community, they did not impede the missionaries who steadily expanded their work during the 1840s and 1850s. Bulgaria becama a major area of missionary expansion in the 1850s and when Robert College got under wat in the 1 860s. Bulgarians were attracted to it like Armenians. When Bulgaria becama independent in 1878, a major portion ohts senidr leadership consisted of Robert College graduates 18.

Armenian Awakening

The awakening of the Armenians in the Attornan Empire in which American missionaries rýored an important role was paralleled by similar developments in the Russian Empire, where urban Armenians improved their status through education and involvement in trade and commerce.

Unharrassed by missionaries and enjoying a somatimes unaesr but essentially mara favorable relatianship with the Russian Orthodox Church, the Armenian national church enjoyed a mara secura position in the Russian Empire. The Czarist government realized the political advantage of having the ancient seat of the Armenian Church on its territart at Echmiadzin. Armenian intellectuals eager to explore the national heritage, restore and purify the language and spread knowledge of their historyamong their rural countrymen did not find themselves at odds with the religious hierarchy as frequently as their compatriots in Turkey. Contacts between Russian and Turkish Armenians expanded steadily during the 19th century.Istanbul was an important intellectual center for Russian Armenians and many traveled there. The RussoTurkish border was not the barrier it becama in the Soviet period - there was continual mavement across it not only by Armenians from both sides but by the other peoples of the region as well.

The Armenians had no serarota territorial or corporata status in the Russian Empire and though the Armenian element in the population of the Transcaucasus grew steadily by both natural increase and immigration, Armenians alsa moved to other regions. Old communities, dating from medieval times, in the Ukraine and Poland, devalared new life. But political development - political ferment is perhaps a better term - came slowir in Russia compared to the Attornan Empire, where the Armenians had been recognized for 400 years as a serarota millet - i.e. natian.

The Patriarch, as Head of the millet, was traditionally assisted and advised by a millet assembly chosen by the community. Several groups were recognized in the community of which the amires (bankers, rich merchants, higher government officials) and the esnafs (smail businessmen, tradefs, craftsmen) were most important. The new intellectual class derived from both these groups. The eastern peasantry rýored no role in the politics of the millet, which centered in Istanbul, nor, until the 1840s, did the Armenian laborers of the capital 19.

The excitement the missionaries coused with their schools-and the dosing of the HaskAy school in 1838-gave ri se to a chain of events which kept the Istanbul Armenian community in turmoil throughout the 1840s. Elections to the millet assembly were hotly contested by the amires and the esnafs, though the two eventually joined together against a new Patriarch popular with the community as a whole. The Attornan government intervened with the result that two new assemblies, one religious and one secular, were elected. Intrigues continued and the Patriarch resigned in protest against the undemocratic working of the assemblies. The whole Armenian community joined in a mass demonstration on the Kumkapi district of the capital in 1848 to support the Patriarch, who was nevertheless replaced. It may be going too far to call this sequence of events the Armenian equivalent of the European revolutions of 1848, as some Armenian historians have done 20, but it ushered in a period of intense and constructive effort on the part of the Attornan Armenian community to organize itself, which culminated in the codification of the Armenian National Constitution on 1860. Intellectuals with a modern education played a major role in this process.

The Constitution was approved by the Sultan in 1863 and henceforth formed the basis for regulation of the religious, Cultural and educationallife of the Armenian community in the Attornan Empire. It is difficult to argue that Attornan rule was despotic and repressive as amatter of principle as many contemporary Armenian historians have done- in light of these developments. The effects of this constitution, as an Armenian Historian acknowledges, were that it

...laid the groundwork for a system of public education for the Armenians of Turkeyand, in doing so, helped bring about a literary renaseence that disseminated liberal ideas and thus led to stiffer opposition to attoman rule 21.

So by the 1860s prospects looked brighter for the Armenians that, at any previous period in their history. Relative peace and prosperity in both the Attornan and Russian empires led to a substantial increase in population in the cities and in the countryside. But it is important also to recall that the newly educated teachefs, professional men and entrepreneurs-the movers and shakers who secured the 1 860 constitution and inspired the rebirth of community life in both Russia and Turkey-were only a very smail proportion of the total population. Rural Armenians in Anatolia and the Caucasus stili led lives unchanged from age-old patterns 22.

A German treyalar in the Caucasus nearly 20 years later had somewhat similar observations on the condition of the Armenians there: The Armenians, numbering about 600,000 souls have no special dwellingplace in the country; theyare everywhere to be found. With them the line of seraratian between the peasant and the remaining population is stili more sharply defined than with the Tartars. The peasants, who in the governments of Erivan and Elizavetpol have intermixed with the Tartars, can, ill outward appearance, scarcely be distinguished from them. The Armenian of the town is, however, of quite anather stamp. He is the merchant par excellence. There is scarcely a single viIIage in the country where one or more Armenians are not playing the part of Jews... Sly, pliant, persevering, seldam if ever conscientious, they monopolise all transactions in business, and speedily become the bankers and tyrants of the place. Stili it must not be concluded from this that there are no honourable exceptions among those whose intelligence and energy have conferred signal benefits uran the country... -'Baron Max von Thielmann, Journey in the Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in Asia, London(John Murray), 1875, Vol. 1, pp. 40-41.

Evolution Toward Violence

In 1862 a rebellion against Ottoman authority broke out in the district of Zeitun (Zeitin), an isolated region in the eas_rn Taurus where an Armenian community had lived since the time of the Cilician Kingdom. It had been granted autonomy by Sultan Murat IV in 1618. "Since Zeitun stili remained semi-independent, it was probably considered a suitable center for political agitation by the Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople and Russian Transcaucasia" 23. Trouble had first develered here during the Crimean War when an ideological preacher, Hovagim, came to arouse the population. To get financial backing he set out for Russia. He was arrested in Erzurum and hanged as a wartime traiter.

The 1862 troubles develered over the governments' efforts to collect taxes and settle Muslim refugees in the district. Another adventurer, levon, who claimed to be a descendant of the last Cilician dinasty and sought assistance from the French government, figured in these disturbances. Some of the Muslims of the region alsa had grievances against the central government. The Pasha of Marash brought in an army to enforce order but was unable to subdue the Armenians. They sent a delegation to Istanbul to negotiate. Meanwhile an Armenian emissary had güne from Istanbul to Paris to persuade Napoleon III to press the Porte to call off the military expedition. Conservative Armenian leaders in Istanbul intervened with the same aim. The military expedition was abandoned and Zeitun was left to its autonomy. All the factors that entered into this complex local situation - which did not, excert for the Armenian factor - differ greatly from many similar episodes of local unruliness in an empire where the authority of the central government was of ten difficult to enforce in the provinces - have never been studied. The affair was declared a victory for Armenian nationalism and widely publicized among Turkish and Russian Armenians:

The Zeitun Rebellion.. became the first of a series of insurrections in Turkish Armenia.. which were inspired by revolutionary ideas that had swept the Armenian world. The Zeitunli insurgents had direct contacts with certain Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople who had been influenced by Mikael Nalbandian, a visiter from Russia to the Turkish capital in 1860 and 1861 24.

In what is known of the troubles in Zeitun in the summer of 1862 we can see all the elements that combined to generate an inexorable mavement toward violence during the final decades of the 19th century: Growing nationalism fostered by intellectuals and disseminated through an increasingly numerous and efficient Armenian press.

External exacerbation of regional situations by outside agitators who improved communication with each other from year to year.

The Russian factor - passiye, as far as we know, in respect to events in Zeitun - the Armenians were seeking Russian heir. During the Crimean War, h oweve r, the Russian government had been active in Encouraging the Armenians of Turkey to serve its interests 25.

The European factor - the successful appeal to the French government.

A confused response by the Attornan authorities-a combination of overreaction and hesitancy, followed by withdrawal under foreign pressure and then passivity; poor co-ordination between Istanbul and provincial authorities. Growing Muslim hostility, fed in large part by the vast flood of North Caucasian Muslim refugees who were given asylum in Turkey following the defeat of Shamil in 1859 and Russian operations against the Circassians in the 1860s. At least half a millian of these destitute and bitter refugees were settled in Anatolia between 1860 and 1870. They resented growing Russophilia among the .Armenians, in some cases brought anti-Armenian prejudices with them from the Caucasus and were often not under effective Governmental discipline.

The 1860s and 1870s brought an explosion of Armenian literary and journGlistic activity. A second and then a third generation of educated Armenians in both Turkeyand Russia welcomed ideas from the West, induding revolutionary doctrines that were fashionable in Europe. The missionaries were no longer a primary, channel for intellectual stimulation of Armenians. Russian Armenians were influenced by Russian revolutionary'_'movements which were increasingly dominated by advocates of violence, such as Narodnaya Valya. Much Armenian literary activity was concerned with questions of language purification and modernization, historyand poetry, but political activists made skillful use of seemingly benign intellectual undertakings and contacts between groups in both countries to lay the groundwork for agitation and rebellion.

If the Attornan government had been as oppressive as most modern Armenian historians daim in retrospect it was, this activity could hardly have taken place in such unhindered fashion. Compared to the international travel controls and internal security arrangements of the Turkish Republic (and most modern states), jet alone the extreme limitations on travel and all forms of communication which the Soviet Union has always enforced, it is astonishing to read how easily Armenian journalists, propagandists, political agents

and churchmen serving the notjonalist revolutionary ca use moved across borders and maintained contact with each other in the latter half of the 19th century. The result was that all of the currents affecting the growth of Armenian nationalism combined to propel it toward making demands and creating expectations that greatly exceeded the capacity of any of the elements of authority to satisfy.

As the direct influence of the missionaries dedined-though their schools and community services continually expanded-a modus vivendi with the national church evolved. Recognition by the Ottoman authorities after 1850 of saparota status for the Armenian Protestants reduced the friction between them and the traditional church hierarchy. During the 1870s and 1880s, nationalist intellectuals became lass hostile toward the national church, and the church lass hostile to them. Both accepted each other as an essential component of the process of national self-assertion. Both contributed to the process of creating exaggerated expectations about where Armenian nationalism could lead.

Balkan Developments

For more than 400 years the Ottoman Empire had functioned as o ramarkabýr effective multi-national state, but in the 19th century everything began to come apart at the same time. No Ottoman territory remained unaffected by the currents of nationalism that grew to flood strength, though the Turks themselves were the last to experience the phenomenon. Troublesome as they were, areas of Armenian population were o backwater compared to the Balkans, where ferment had been intensifying ever since the Greek indepandance struggle and the Empire had suffered extensive territoriallosses. The Russians and European powers were constantly drawn into Balkan affairs.

A critical period began in the mid-1870s when insurrection in Bosnia and agitation in Serbia brought European pressura on the Turks to accelerata reform. The French and German consuls in Salonika (stili Turkish) were murdered by o mob in May 1876. Istanbul riots broke out and Sultan Abd,laziz was found dead under mysterious circumstances. The Ministers of War and Foreign Affairs were murdered by o disaffected army officer. Serbia dedared war on Turkey. The new Sultan Murat proved unstable and was replaced in August by Abdulhamid. Meanwhile o revolt had been planned in Bulgario with hope of Russian intervention but was betrayed to local Ottoman authorities. Irregular troops were mobilized locally to crush it and cornage ensued.

What came to be known as the Bulgarian Horrors coused o furor in the British and European press and o wave of concern about the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire swept Europe. Armenian activists were eager to capitalize on the situation, but they attracted little attention except among their compatriots in Russia. In Russia too the main concern was for the Balkan Slavs. Czarist ministers sensed an opportunity to avenge the defeat in the Crimean War. The Turks, h oweve r, quickly gained military superiority over the Serbs but were forced by o Russian ultimatum to agree to an armistice. Britain, in spite of strong public pressura over the Bulgarian Horrors, did not abandon her longstanding policy of supporting the Ottoman Empire against Russian desires to deal it o death blow 26.

Britain was instrumental in convening o six-power conferance in Istanbul at the and of the year to try to stave off o Russian dedaration of war against Turkey. The conferance approved o dedaration of indepandance for Bulgaria which had actually been drawn up by the American consul general in Istanbul, Schuyler 27, and wrestled with formulos for guaranteeing the security of Serbia and Montenegro. Russia was determined not to miss the opportunity to adyance its interests in the Balkans more decisively and dedared war in April 1877.

Fighting in the Balkans proved tougher than the Russians had expected. They suffered two serious defeats at Plevna before they prevailed over Turkish forcas and moved on to Edirne in January 1878. On the Coucasian front the Russians advanced rapidly, after war was dedered. They made a more determined effort than in any previous Russo-Turkish war to exploit the Armenian population of eastern Anatolia and many Armenians responded. Turkish battle losses were heavy and concern about security of rear areas was high. Kars was captured but Erzurum and Batum held out until af ter the armistice had been signed it Edirne. The Russians advanced to "atalca after the armistice but the British fleet moved up to prevent occupation of Istanbul. Russia rushed to impose a peace treaty on Turkey, which was signed at San Stefano on 3 March 1878. The Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul tried to persuade the Russians to indude provisian for an independent Armenian state in eastern Anatolia in this treaty in recognition of Armenian services to Russian interests during the war. The Russians were more interested in their own territorjel expansion and understandably apprehensive - in light of co-operation between Russian Armenians and anti-Czarist revolutionaries-about the effect an independent Armenia might have on Russian Armenians. (Here we see the same combination of attitudes that led to the Bolshevik throttling of Armenian independence in 192021). So the Patriarch had to settle for Artide XVI of the Treaty of San Stefano in which the Porte promised reforms in areas of Armenian population and protectian against Muslim attacks which were linked to arrangements for Russian troop withdrawal.

Britain and Austria were not about to jet Russia get away with the San Stefano treaty - the main point at issue was not Armenian interests or Russian territorjel ambitious in the Coucasus, but the Greater Bulgaria Russia wished to establish. The European powers insisted on an international settlement of the Russo-Turkish war. A conference convened in Berlin in June and Armenians built up naive hopes that it would result in a revised treaty more favorable to their interests. Instead, the requirement linking reforms and protectiye measures to Russian troop withdrawal was dropped and the Armenians thus deprived of legal basis for requesting Russian intervention in the event of disagreements with Attornan authorities over reforms or local incidents. In return for abandening Greater Bulgaria, Russia was awarded Batum, Kars and Ardahan, so Turkey, as well as the Armenians, jest in the Treaty of Berlin 28.

Unrealistic Armenian expectations over the Treaty of Berlin, when frustrated, left nationalisý activists resentful and contributed to further radicalization of the Armenian nationalisý mevement during the next decade. The Treaty of San Stefano has gene down in Armenian annals as an example of great power perfidy, a precursor of the abortive Treaty of Sevres at the end of World War I.

Bulgaria had gained independence. Bulgarians, were a people whom Armenians regarded as having a much less distinguished history than their own. If Bulgaria deserved to be independent, why not Armenia? Revolutionary nationalists who embraced such argumentation in the 1880s and 1890s willfully avoided facing the essential difference between their situations and that of the Bulgarians. Though there was serious controversy about Bulgaria's proper boundaries 29, and though Bulgaria contained sizable minorities, the newly independent country was nevertheless a coherent geographical entity inhabited by a majority of Bulgarians.

Nothing comparable existed in territories daimed by the Armenians. They were outnumbered by Muslims in every one of the six eastern provinces traditionally called Armenian. In the city of Erzurum, which many nationalists regarded as their natural capital, Armenians were a distinct minority. Only the city (not province) of Van held an Armenian majority but in the surrounding districts, Muslims predominated. An independent Armenia would inevitably contain only a minority of Armenians unless the Muslims were expelled 30. What about Muslim rights? Occasionally Armenian nationalisý publications addressed the subject, but no formulos were ever agreed on. So maximalist territorjel daims were pressed ever more vigorously, -and unrealistican -by Armenian journalists and political agitators during the 1880s and 1890s as first the relatively moderete Armenakan, then the radical Marxist Hunchak and finally the edectic Dashnak parti es were formed. All were dedered revolutionary and the last two advocated terror as a means of advancing the fight for independence.

Istanbul continued be the most important seat of Armenian activity. It had the most intelleetually, professionally and commercially active Armenian population but they were stili a distinct minority in comparison to the Turks. What was to be the relationship of Istanbul Armenians to an independent Armenia? Many wished to have nothing to do with the notian. Others paid it jip service. Sema sensed the disastrous patentjel revolutionary aetivism held for Armenians everywhere in the Attornan Empire. But their zeal kept Armenian revolutionary nationalists from acknowledging, in practical terms, the fact that the Armenians have been for the most part a diaspora natian since at least medieval times 31.

The Road to Ruin

So by the and of the 1880s we see the roots of Armenian violence-and viciance against Armenians-in full view. Viciance became inevitable because the Armenian demands which were most vigorously pressed had become irrational, impossible of attainment. The irrationality did not deter the Czarist government from supporting Armenian extremists for their own political purposes eyan as they increasingly restricted the activities of Armenian nationalists in their own territories.

Armenian nationalists-always a minority of the total Armenian population, whether in Turkey or Russia continued to write, to agitata and to plot, to seek-and aftan to find-what they, regarded as foreign support for their aspirations and their struggle.

For an Attornan bureaucracy hard pressed to meet demands for political and administratiye reform among subject peoples as well as Turks, maintenence of order in outlying regions became increasingly difficult. Onca dashes began to occur and order broke down, no one-government or local communities-possessed the physical strength, the political skill or the powers of persuasion to contain disaster. It was not only the Armenians of the Attornan Empire who were affected, but Muslims as well. Everyone jest.

When war broke out in 1914, the Russians again anecuraged Armenian expeetations and exploited the eastarn Anatolian Armenians as a fifth column. In the and they did not intervene to protect the Armenians when Attornan authorities, in a life-and-death wartime situation, moved to deport them, nar were the Russians able to proteet their collaborators against the yengecnce of local Muslims when Attornan authority collapsed. As had happened so aftan before during the preceding 150 years, Russia was willing to exploit Armenians for her own purposes but unprepared to make sacrifices on their behalf.

Armenian embitterment and chagrin at the disaster which intemperate and irrational nationalism brought on the Armenians of the Attornan Empire have persisted through three generations. Viciance against Turkish officials in the 1920s proved to be a lass charaeteristic recetion than the publicity campaigns and lobbying which jang prevented resumption of U.S.-Turkish relations, though the U.S. had never actually dedared war on the Attornan Empire. Soviet rule with collectivization and purges brought viciance and the threat of it to the Soviet Armenian Republic and tensions between the, Armenians of the Caucasus and the Muslims and Georgians of the area are stili said to persist. But Armenian viciance and the threat of it were absant from the international see ne until the early 1970s when Armenian terrorists began assassinating Turkish diplomats and attacking Turkish officas abroad under extremely irrational circumstances. This campaign has gained momentum and the terrorists have gained skill. There are many reasons to suspeet that the campaign is part of the massiye effort to destabilize Turkeyand destroy democracy there to which the Soviet Union devoted major resources during the 1970s-and which may stili not have been antirely abandoned.

Armenian communities in many parts of the world-notably in France and the U.S.-have been remarkably equivocal about (if not openly supporting of) such terrorism. The terrorists are remembered in Armenian church services and large sums are collected in Armenian communities for their defensa when theyare put on trial. The dimate for this astonishing advocacy of viciance is maintained by an emotionalized version of Armenian history which is propagated in the ethnic press, taught in cultural programs and pressed on school authorities for inclusion in curricula. Even in the 1970s it has been hard to find a more extreme version of what one American historian has called "creedal passion" 32. which provokes populations to irresponsible behavior. Armenian-origin intellectuals and journalists have become viciously intolerant of non-Armenianorigin colleagues who do not accept their biases and who venture to question Armenian statistics or try to excmine Armenian, Ottoman and relevent Russian histofical records according to recognized standards of objectivity and respect for methodology.

One is driven to wonder, for example, whether an essentially honest example of scholarship such as louise Nalbandian's Armenian Revolutionary Movement, which originally appeared more than 20 years ego, would even be published by a scholar of Armenian origin today

-----------------------------------------------------------

1-A good example of this process is the work of a rare non-Armenian scholar enthusiast, David Lang, Professor of Caucasian Studies in the University of London, Armenia, Cradie of Civilization (Third, Corrected Edition), London (Alien and Unwin), 1980.
2-This important distinction is carefully defined in arecent authoritative work by Hugh Seton-Watson Nations and States, Bouider CO (Westview Press) 1977, where the Armenians are discussed as a "diaspora nation", inter alio in pp. 383-391
3-See "The Shaddadids of Ani - Dvin, Ani and Trade-Routes" in V. Minorsky, Studies in Coucasian History, London (Taylor), 1933, pp. 104-106.
4-A convenient summary History of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilida is available in LS.R. Boase (ed.), The Cilidan Kingdom of Armenia, Edinburgh - London (Scottish Academic Press), 1978, pp. 1-33.
5-Rd. Dr. James Issaverdens, Hislary of the Armenian Church, Venice (Armenian Monaslery of Sý. Lazarus). 1875, p. 243
6-Ibid., p. 345.
7-Mesrob K. Krikorian, Armenians in the Service of the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1908, London (Rouýledge & Kegan Paul), 1977, pp. 2-3. The auýhor's reference lo "three millian Armenians of Anatalio" is an interesting example of mythology adopted by an auýhor who goes lo considerable lengýhs to avoid il. The Armenian Palriarchale claimed an Armenian populalion of 2,100,000 in the entire Ottoman Empire in 1912. Ottoman census figures, as cited in Stanford. J. and Ezel K. Show, Hislory of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol. II, London/New York (CUP), 1977, P. 205, indicale that the lota i Armenian populalion of the empire during the period 1882-1914 never exceeded 1,300,000. The masý ýhorough sludy of this complex subject yet to appear, Juslin McCarýhy, Muslim and Minorilies, the Populalion of Ottoman Analolla and the End of the Empire, New York /London (NYU Press), 1983, concludes that official censuses undercounted and develops formulae for compensaling for the undercutting, arriving al an Armenian population of 1,493.276 in 1912 (p. 112).
8-This Hislory is comprehensively Irealed, wiýh remarkable objectivity, by Muriel Aýkin in Russia and Iran, 1780-1828, Minneapolis LU. of Minnesola Press), 1980.
9-For a uselul short analysis, with statistics see George A. Boumoutian, "The population ol Persian Armenia prior to and immediately lollowing itsAnnexation to the Russian, Empire: 1826-1832", Washington, 1980 (Smithsonian Institution/Wilson Center, Kennan Institute Occasional Paper 91).
10-W.E.D. Alien & Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlelields, a History ol the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828-1921, Cambridge (CUP), 1953.
11-Ibid.
12-James A. Field. America and the Mediterranean World. 1776-1982, Princeton (PUP), 1969 pp. 92-93.
13-Field, op. cit., pp. 156-57.
14-Eli Smith & H.G.O. Dwight, Missionary Researches in Armenia, including a Journey through Asia Minor and info Georgia and Persia, Vol. 1. pp.215-16, as cited in Field. op. cit., p.157
15-Robert I. Daniel, American Phi\anihropy in the Nem East 1820-1960 Aýhens, Ohio \Ohio Univ. Press), 1970, pp. 46-47.
16-A contemporary evaluation of the influence of Armenian Catholics provides a measure af the importance of this group:The Roman Cathalic branch of the Armenian Church has done much more for literatura and civilization the n the original body. Few Catholics are found in Armenia itself, exeapting at Erzeroom and other cities, where a remnant remain: while at Constantinople a great number of the higher and wealthier Armenians give their adherence to that creed. Their minds are more enlarged, theyare lass Oriental in their ideas, being usually considered half Franks by their more Eastem brethren,Cited from Robert Curzon, Armenia: a Year at rzeroom, and on the Frantiers of Russia, Turkeyand Persic, London Uohn Murray), 18S4, p. 227.
17-Daniel, op. cil., p. Sý.
18-Field, op. it., p. 362ff
19-The immediately preceding discussion and that which follows draw heaviiý on Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Mavement,Berkeley ILos Angeles (Univ. of California Press). 1963
20-e.g. Nalbandian, ap. cit.., p.45.
21-Nalbandian, ap. cil.., p.48.
22-Curzon, who lived among them for a year in the 18505, found !iýýle to admire in Armenian life. His views are typical of dozens of other 19th century travelers of mony nationalities:
Ignorance and superstition contend for masteryamong the lower dasses of Armenia, whose religion shows that tendeney to sink into a kind of idolatry which is comman among other branches of the Church of Christ in warmer dimates ... Their manners and customs are the same as these of the Turks, whom they copy in dress and in their general way of living... More than 100,000 Armenians are seýýled in Constantinople; these are not so ignorant, and are, even in appearance, different from those of their original country, who are a heavy and loutish race, while [those in Istanbul) are thin, sharp, active in money-making arts, and remarkable for their acuteness in merca_tile transactions... The superiority of the Mahometan over the Christian cannot fail to strike the mind of an intelligent person who has lived among theme races... This arises partly from the oppression which the Turkish rulers in the provinces have exercised for centuries... this is probably the chief reason; but the Turk obeys the dictates of his religion, the Christian does not; the Turk does not drink, the Christian gets drunk; the Turk is hanest; the Christian is a liar and a cheat; his religion is so overgrown with the rank weeds of superstition that it no longer serves to guide his mind Curzon, ap. cit., p. 22 1, pp. 232-235.A German traveler in the Caucasus nearly 20 years later had somewhat similar observations on the condition of the Armenians there:
The Armenions, numbering about 600,000 souls... have no special dwelling-place in the country; theyare everýwhere to be found. With them the line of separation between the peasant and the remaining populatian is stili more sharply defined than with the Tartars. The peasants, who in the governments of Erivan and Elizavetpol have intermixed with the Tartars, can, iII outward appearance, searcelf be distinguished from them. The Armenian of the town is, however, of quite anather stamp. He is the merchant par excellence. There is searcelf a single viiiage in the country where one or more Armenians are not playing the part of Jews... Sýý, pliant, persevering, seldam if ever conscientious, they monopolise all transactions in business, and speedily become the bankers and tyrants of the place. Stili it must not be conduded from this that there are no honourable exceptions among those whose intelligence and energy have conferred signal benefits upon the country... - Baran Max von Thielmann, Journey in the Caucasus, Persia and Turkey in Asia, London Uohn Murray). 1875, Vol. 1, pp. 40-41.
23-Nalbandian, op. cit., p. 69.
24-Nalbandian, op. cil., p. 71.
25-Ci. Alien & Muratoff, op. cit., p. 84
26-For a good short summary ol these complex events, see Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917, Oxlord (Clarendon Press), 1967,pp. 448-459
27-See "The Independence ol Bulgaria" in Field, op.cit., pp. 359- 373.
28-Nalbandian, or. cil.., p.82-83
29-The Macedonian question stili generatas slrain between Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece.
30-Some of these provinces also contained smail groups of oýher Christians and helerodox sects such as Yezidis.
31-Their attitude is reminiseent of the territorial claims ASALA makes today, the granting of whieh would result in eession of up to one quarter of Turkey's national territory, where 7- 10 millian Muslims and no Armenians live, to the Soviet Union!
32-Samuel P. Huntigton, American Politrics - - the Promise ol Disharmony, Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 85 ff.